Hi, I'm Jan König 👋. I'm one of the founders of Jovo, 28 years old, and live in Berlin. < Go back to learn more.

How we're Trying to Build an Ecosystem, Step by Step

One of the things that I love about Open Source Software (OSS) is the opportunity to have people build things around and on top of your product. Ideally, this can become a whole ecosystem of tools and services.

We're far away from being an ecosystem, but in the last few days, some cool things happened that made me write this post:

Closed vs Open Systems

Frankly, there are a lot of sales-driven, closed source enterprise tools out there that make way more money that we do right now. Many large companies want to be sold to and also want the assurance that they can blame someone if there is a bug. This gets a little more difficult (to explain) with OSS than with SaaS behind "closed doors".

And there is nothing wrong with building a closed system, it's just not something Alex and I would build. We believe in "legacy over short-term profit" (mentioned in a previous newsletter) and that building an open, community-driven product will pay off at the end of the day. We believe that being at the center of a committed, caring community gives us an information advantage in an early market like this.